Some of the most creative thinking in television these days has nothing to do with comedy or drama. It's about the commercials.
Fueled by a growing sense of desperation, networks are inserting games, quizzes and mini-dramas into commercial breaks. They're incorporating more product pitches into programming. Two experimental programs without traditional commercial breaks will premiere this fall. NBC has even called on Jerry Seinfeld for help.
There's only a couple of network shows I bother with, anyway, but there's this "steep and slippery slope" thingee...
This is all being done to stop viewers with DVRs from fast-forwarding through advertisements, or to circumvent those that do. Adding to the urgency, this week Nielsen Media Research begins offering ratings for commercial breaks, instead of just the shows around them.
"We all need to become more creative in how we incorporate sponsors into a program," said Ed Swindler, executive vice president for NBC Universal ad sales. "No one on the creative side or the business side wants to make commercials intrusive, but we do need to commercialize efficiently so viewers can afford to get free television."
An estimated 17 percent of American homes now have digital video recorders. Nielsen estimates that in prime-time, nearly half of 18-to-49-year-old viewers with DVRs are watching recorded programs instead of live ones. Of these, six in 10 skip through the ads.
Figure in bathroom breaks and channel surfers, and that makes for a lot of missed opportunities for marketers - with a lot more coming as DVR use grows.
So far, the most frequent experiment is to insert original content into commercial breaks. The CW network pioneered "content wraps" last year where, in one example, a hair care company ditched the typical ad to present beauty tips and interviews with the network's stars, all involving the company's products. The CW figured on doing six content wraps at first, but advertisers were so enthusiastic that 20 were done, a spokesman said.
TNT aired a five-episode mini-drama about a young woman, with viewers directed to a Web site - plastered with the sponsoring credit card company's ads - for the finale. Fox created an animated taxi driver, Oleg, who would appear during breaks talking to his passengers. Next month Court TV offers a mystery about an unsolved murder with clues dropped in commercial breaks, online and via text messages; the game's winner gets $25,000. Fans of NBC's "Scrubs" were asked trivia questions at the beginning of a commercial break, the answer appearing in between ads.
Seinfeld will appear in several quick comedy skits for NBC next fall that also promote his upcoming movie. TBS has tried making commercial breaks a destination. It often bunches a series of funny commercials together and promotes them ahead of time to viewers.
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